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24 May 2011

Sarala-Saz

There are too many photos in this post, and I'm sorry for that, but it'll be easier for me than splitting them up.

This was a CBT yurtstay. It turned out that it was only 35 miles from our house in Tokmok, but it took nearly 5 hours to drive there because there isn't a road over the Shamshy pass. We drove around the mountains to Balykchy to Kochkor and up to the jailoo.

Shamsy is the village below that supports the herding in the mountains. A few families live on the jailoo from about April to October to take care of the horses, sheep, cows, and yaks. All are used for meat and/or milk.

Jyldyz studied music in Bishkek and sang a few songs for us after dinner.

Feeding the sheep chip fire. Good fuel and it didn't smell.

Sinister yaks. Acutally, it's just the lighting. They came off the mountain and posed neatly for us.

The demented chicken looking for a way into the yurt.

Jyldyz and her husband stay in the wagon and use the yurt for tourists. We met her father-in-law in the village below and I hoped that she got a least a little of the money we paid since she had to do most of the work for us while we were there.

Cars aren't designed to get to places like this.

The chicken yurt and the sheep chip pile. You can also see the little ditch that brings water down near the yurt. That's the only water source for the family.

2 comments:

I only saw Jyldyz milking the cows and I think that's all we drank. I was hoping for yak milk though.

I think it was more an experience than a vacation. My husband and I were joking that when my parents just visited one of my sisters, they took her to a well-equipped house on the ocean. We took them here.

For me though, it was a vacation because I didn't have to cook or deal with the water like I do at home, and those are the two hardest parts for an overnight stay. Pretty much everything else was the same for me. If I stayed longer, figuring out how to clean clothes and people would have become a problem.